


This Common Chord

by Siria



Category: The Montmaray Journals - Michelle Cooper
Genre: Future Fic, Multi, POV Female Character, Polyamory, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arrangement was an odd mixture of practicality and sentiment—but then, Julia thought, so was she. So were they all, in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Common Chord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trinityofone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/gifts).



> Set before the epilogue in _The FitzOsbornes at War_. A birthday fic for trinityofone.

Julia had been raised as a dutiful, if uninspired, member of the Church of England, and so was a little hazy on the finer points of Purgatory. Still, she rather thought it must be something like this: sitting in a grey March drizzle, smiling her best Queen-Consort of Montmaray smile, while she waited to dispense gymkhana medals. Despite the best efforts of the organisers to rig up a canopy to shelter them, Julia's shoes were quite spattered with mud, and the elderly dowager who'd been cajoled into presenting the prizes along with her was terribly put out. 

"At my age, my dear," Lady Comstock said in a carrying voice, "it's the gout. In cold like this, I'm a martyr to it."

Julia kept on smiling and said something noncommittal, while on the field in front of them, a small girl tried unsuccessfully to urge her recalcitrant pony around a barrel. 

"Not, of course, that I compare myself to your dear husband," Lady Comstock continued. 

Julia blinked and turned to look at the woman. So far as she was aware, Toby had never set foot in this part of Suffolk, and Julia couldn't imagine how their respective social circles would have overlapped. Lady Comstock rather looked as if she'd been to school with Methuselah. "I beg your pardon?"

"Well, His Majesty has _sacrificed so bravely_ ," Lady Comstock said. She tapped the side of her shoe significantly with her walking stick and gave Julia a knowing look over the top of her glasses. "We're all so grateful for what he and his comrades _offered up_. The dear boy! It makes one feel quite ashamed of complaining about rationing when he is no longer quite… _you know_."

There was a long pause, while Lady Comstock looked pious and Julia couldn't quite decide if giving in to the surge of nausea that swept through her, or yelling at a silver-haired baronet's widow, would cause the greater scandal. 

"Of course," Lady Comstock continued thoughtfully, "this damp air isn't good for my rheumatics, either."

Julia clenched her hands, white-knuckled, in her lap, and forced herself to keep on smiling, constant and steady, until her cheeks ached.

*****

The arrangement was an odd mixture of practicality and sentiment—but then, Julia thought, so was she. So were they all, in their own way. 

Julia had considered the arrangement for a long time before proposing it. She could just have turned a blind eye to everything, of course, and given them her tacit blessing. The house in Belgravia Square had several large bedrooms; Simon and Toby had proven that they could be discreet. There was no chance of any by-blows to embarrass her, and Julia knew that Toby would still have done his duty by her in order to provide the island with an heir. But if she'd done that—oh, they would have been _grateful_ to her, but it would have been that desperate, shamed kind of gratitude that always seemed to turn bitter in the end. 

Julia had had her war. What she wanted now was a chance at a peace. 

*****

Lady Comstock and the various members of the Market Lytchett WI looked so aghast at the mere thought of a member of royalty taking the train back to London—no chauffeur! No ladies-in-waiting!—that Julia made sure not to let them catch a glimpse of her ticket. She was quite certain that the knowledge that she had travelled there on a cheap second-class return would have done fatal damage to their idea of Julia as a _proper_ queen. 

(From the way some of them looked at her, though, the damage was most likely done—after all, it wasn't as if she'd married a British royal, was it, and Montmaray was practically almost _French_. No wonder she'd turned up her nose at the potted meat sandwiches—she was probably too used to foreign muck.) 

It was a relief once the train pulled out of the station, and Julia could stop smiling that terrible fixed smile, could toe off the shoes that pinched just a little too much for comfort. Market Lytchett may have been quiet and verdant in a chocolate-box sort of way, but Julia far preferred the bustle that greeted her as the train pulled into Liverpool Street station. So much less tiring, to be striding along the platforms through crowds of others who were entirely indifferent to her, and to find Simon waiting for her on the concourse. His hat was slightly askew atop his tousled dark hair, and there could be no real expression of affection between them in public, after all, not when Julia's only legal marriage was with Toby, but Simon still offered her his arm and let her lean into him as they walked out of the station towards the taxi rank.

"How was it?" he said. "Did you smile benevolently at one and all while you dispensed prizes for the best knitted jersey?" 

"Darling," Julia sighed, "I was perfectly regal, despite _intense_ provocation. They seated me next to a ghastly fright who talked at me endlessly about her gout, and the tea they served was quite stewed. I don't know why I let Mummy cajole me into these sorts of things."

"Well," Simon said, corners of his mouth twitching ever so slightly, "It _could_ be because you're a thirty-year-old woman who still talks of her Mummy."

"Hush," Julia said, as he handed her into the taxi, "or I shall tell Veronica that you made disparaging remarks about Socialists."

*****

The first time that Julia had kissed them—both of them—had been in the immediate aftermath of making her proposal. Toby'd looked disbelieving, and Simon halfway to disapproving—but then, Toby had always had trouble believing offers made in earnest, and Simon had always been his own worst enemy in part because he could never quite rid himself of that stubborn streak of orthodoxy. They might both want, but it was a struggle to let themselves _have_. 

Which, to Julia's way of thinking, was quite remarkably idiotic. 

Perhaps she would never done it before the war. Perhaps she would never have reached out with one hand to clasp Toby's wrist, while with the other she drew a shocked, silent Simon down to kiss her. Oh, Julia had heard about these sorts of things—had there been a girl in her boarding school who hadn't thrilled to the gossip about the Bloomsbury Set?—but would she ever have dared to stroke Toby's face and say, "It's all right, darling," before coaxing him to put his arm around Simon's waist? 

Certainly she would not have done it feeling the way she had: sober and determined and knowing that so very much depended on the quality of Simon and Toby's responses. Julia remembered holding her breath and waiting until the tense line of Toby's mouth trembled and collapsed, until Toby said, " _Simon_ ," as if the very word was sacred in his mouth; until Toby kissed Simon and Simon held her close and the room was full of relief and desperation both. 

*****

Toby was in his study when they got back to Belgravia Square. It was something of a standing joke amongst the three of them, referring to the place where Toby scribbled business letters and huffed at the necessity of official correspondence as a study. Julia was hardly a bluestocking herself, but she was quite certain that she had construed more Latin in her time than Toby had. She poked her head around the study door to see Toby's fair head bent over some file or other. There was already a glass of scotch at his elbow, though it was not quite five o'clock; the sight made Julia frown. 

However, she confined herself to saying, "I'm back, darling. We're heating up the last of the oxtail soup, if you'd like some? There's fresh bread, too."

"There in a moment," Toby murmured. He tilted his head a little towards her when he spoke, but most of his attention was still caught by whatever was on the page. He looked so drawn and tired that it was all Julia could do not to cross the small room, wrap her arms around him and rest her cheek against his hair. She knew that the gesture wouldn't help, though—not with that stubborn FitzOsborne pride, with those terrible dreams that had him reaching for the whiskey bottle so much lately that it troubled her and left Simon furious. 

_All those things he'd offered up_ , Lady Comstock had said. What had the silly old bat known about it—about any of it? What could Julia know about it herself, even after all the nights when Toby had woken up crying, panting raggedly, batting away phantom flames; when the only comfort she and Simon could offer was to be found on the rumpled sheets, in the space between their bodies?

The worn parquet floor clicked beneath Julia's feet as she walked back towards the kitchen. She found Simon there, stirring the soup with ferocious concentration. 

"You're not supposed to curdle it, you know," Julia said, leaning against one of the kitchen cupboards and folding her arms. "Or chastise it."

"Hrm," Simon said, leaning over to kiss her softly. "Is he still making an ass of himself?"

"A little bit," Julia replied. It was at least pleasantly warm in the kitchen, and she eased off her uncomfortable shoes and sighed, wiggling her toes in relief. "But isn't it always pot, kettle, when it comes to my boys?"

Simon huffed a laugh under his breath at that. "More than likely," he said wryly, which knowing Simon was always his way of apologising for his part in the events of last Tuesday morning. "You tolerate the two of us with almost as much patience as Sophie does."

Julia took a deep breath. She could hear Toby coming down the hall towards the kitchen, the slightly syncopated sound of his gait. She supposed now as good a time as any to say it. "Well," she said as the kitchen door swung open. "What if it turns out that it's not just the two of you any more?"

"I don't follow?" Simon said, his forehead creasing in confusion. 

"Two of us what?" Toby said, tearing off a piece from the loaf and popping it in his mouth. 

For the first time, Julia felt wholly grateful for all those long weekend afternoons spent learning etiquette and proper posture. She drew on every lesson Mrs Fanshaw had taught her, squaring her shoulders and resisting the urge to wrap both arms around her stomach. "I was thinking David, if it's a boy," she said. 

Toby's mouth fell open; Simon stared. 

"I know it's not a FitzOsborne name, but the eldest Stanley-Ross boy is always a David, and since our David wa—"

"A baby?" Toby interrupted, at the same time that Simon said, "What?" 

"October or November," Julia said, mock blithe, tamping down the laughter that threatened to overwhelm her at the looks on their faces. How two such good-looking men could bear such a close resemblance to gaping fish was beyond her. "But I could be—"

Toby whooped, ear-splittingly loud in the tiled kitchen, and Simon picked her up and turned giddy circles with her, laughing. While they were distracted, the soup boiled over: a hissing eruption of brown froth spreading out across the stovetop. Toby swore, picking up the saucepan and dumping it in the sink, Simon turning the cold water on at full blast before opening the kitchen window wide. 

"I'm sorry," Simon said. "I'm afraid that's dinner ruined."

"It's fine," Julia said, sitting down at the scrubbed-pine kitchen table. "There's still bread, and there's that jam we've been saving in the pantry."

"But—"

"It's _fine_ ," Julia said, smiling up at the two of them, and it was—if a bowl of soup was the biggest thing that Julia was going to have to offer up in order to see those kinds of grins on Toby and Simon's faces, well, that was a sacrifice she was willing to make.


End file.
